The Girl With the TARDIS Blue Hair
by TypingKira
Summary: It's hard to fight what you were created to be. The odd young Nel Grey finds this out after meeting the strange, kindly Doctor Who. Hilarity and crazy ensue as this young companion finds out a dark secret about her past and why her hair turns TARDIS blue.
1. Chapter 1

"Come on old girl, come on!" he shouted, patting the control panel roughly, making a loud thudding sound against metal. Loud rattling rang out and the whole TARDIS shook violently. But he wasn't afraid, or angry, or even worried. He knew how the TARDIS was, a temperamental old thing, but his temperamental old thing, but he did love her so. She was the best part of this whole bit.

Oh how he loved the sound of her engines as they whooshed through time and space. Really, there were few sounds in the entire universe that made him feel so utterly fine, and, indeed, safe. Because even though it probably wasn't safe, it was for him.

He didn't have the time to explain (not even in a time machine).

And as the TARDIS stopped shuddering, he looked around for a flash of red hair and listened for the sound of Pond's voice – and realized that she wasnt' there.

"Well of course she's not there," he muttered to himself. "She's on Earth with Rory."

It occurred to him that he was on Earth too, as he opened the door, but instead of finding himself in Leadsworth, he found himself in a narrow alley in France.

Paris, actually.

Pre-revolutionary France, actually.

France, 1772, to be exact.

He had only a single clue as to where he should have been going, and that was the memory of a scent in the TARDIS, and a single crushed, bruised tea leaf.

Who had left it?

The Doctor rather liked Paris, perhaps. He couldn't decide. He could see that there was quite a bit of suffering here. Starving people on the streets, filth in the gutters, children running around freezing their little behinds off.

But enough about that.

The coffeehouse smelled of strongly scented perfume water and of unwashed people and of, naturally, rather bitter coffee. He vaguely heard music playing from some kind of enormous music box in high, piercing notes.

"Hello there," he said to the man at the inner door. He watched with a lopsided grin as the man looked at his tweed jacket, bow tie, and plain trousers, with scratched up leather shoes. They needed a good polish, perhaps, but they were comfy. His hair needed a combing, and since he wasn't wearing a wig he probably looked even more absurd than usual.

"Name?" asked the man.

"The Doctor," he smiled.

A waiter brought him up to the main room, and sat him down at a table across from a young lady. The tables around him and in front of him were all covered in pretty white silky covers and lace doilies and cups and saucers, sugar and milk and sweets.

"So, Doctor, you found me. Totally not shocking, but it kind of seems like you did it on accident," smiled the girl.

She wasn't young at all, really, maybe seventeen or eighteen, but she had the wide eyes and small, delicate features of a child. Her hair, underneath a smart little white turban in the latest mode, was TARDIS blue, her eyes a lighter shade of the same color. Her skin was pale, a bit freckly.

"Well well well," smiled the Doctor, his own goofy-looking grin.

"Has anyone ever told you that you stick out like a sore thumb?" she asked teasingly, her eyes aiming straight for his bow tie. "Bow ties are still cool, I see."

"Bow ties are always cool."

"Right. I always forget that no matter how much time passes for me, it's always just a blink for you while you're in the TARDIS. Can't ever seem to wrap my head around that."

she sipped her tea as he glanced at her clothes. Her dress was a plain grey, but anything but plain in design. "No sack-back?" he asked.

"Doc! Sack backed gowns are for formal occasions," she smiled. "Nope, plain old gowns for just regular days, _a la polonaise _when you're feeling dressy, and sackbacks for dances. Panniers for court."

"Oh stop it, what's it matter?" he said, rolling his eyes and tossing his hands. "You always love to point out the things I don't know."

"Of course! What fun would it be if you did actually know everything?" she asked with a pretty little pink grin as she rested her elbows on the table and held her chin against her twined fingers.

"Right, well, I assume you called me here for a reason?"

"I wanted to let you know that. . . that we were right. My programming. . . it's changing. Doctor. . . I'm falling in love with you again."


	2. Chapter 2

Nel Grey walked down the park pathways often. Being inside all the time drove her crazy with nervous energy. Her mousy brown hair bobbed lightly in the breeze, even while a light mist drove

Nel was known to have her quirks. She didn't much care for being around other people, although she always liked to have someone around her. She loved pets, and kept a small school of goldfish in a large tank in her bedroom, and those fish never seemed to die. She had two parents, but they never seemed to do very parent-y things.

She loved shoes, which was normal, and bow ties, which was also normal. She didn't like TV, said it gave her a headache, but she loved her MP3 player, which had as much Mozart as Lady GaGa, both of whom she was convinced weren't from Earth.

While she was unusual looking, she was also pretty, but boys never seemed to like her. And when they did, they didn't actually like _her_, rather it was the fact that she was a girl and had all those sort of girly bits and did nice things like hold hands and blush sometimes.

Sometimes, she looked up at the sky, and felt very, very sad and very, very small. Other times, she would get very excited. She always seemed to know when a star wasn't a star, and could pick out planets faster than Patrick Moore. She knew the exact number of craters on the face of the moon on any one day, and sometimes, people swore she was from there.

Her shoes made loud clippy-cloppy noises on the walkway, and in the corner of her eyes she could see people that hadn't actually been there for a long time. Women in crinolines, men with bushy facial hair and top hats, not that these scared her. She'd always been able to see them. They nodded at her politely, or curtsied, but she couldn't do the same or people would think she was crazy(er).

She stopped. What was that noise?

_Wheeeeeeoooooo. Wheeeeeeeeeeeoooooo. Wheeeeeeeeeooooooo. _

Whatever it was, it was getting louder, and fading, then louder and fading again. It was a nice sound, and one she felt like she knew very well, even though she'd never heard it before in her life.

A small kiosk with a sleepy vendor sold things that could have been eaten quickly, coffee and crisps and candy and whatnot. Beside this, a vintage blue police box appeared, literally from out of thin air.

No one seemed to notice it.

When the door opened, a soft golden light shone on the walkway, and a man peeked out and looked around, looking curious, then a bit upset. Nel walked over to the stall and bought something, just so she could look at the man without any sort of show, although she was staring right at him and probably not being very sneaky about it.

The Doctor peeked out the door of the TARDIS, still a bit shaken from the trip. What year was he in? Looking around, he realized he was probably in the same year, a different season perhaps. Autumn?

This made him a bit confused, and a little bit hurt. Why would the TARDIS just take him here?

He didn't want to be in this time period anymore, after all he'd just left behind Amy and Rory, and really he wanted something so entirely different from them and their lives and their world, he wanted to be a million million million miles from the Ponds and the thought of River Song.

He was in a park, in London. The air smelled of the city, of gasoline and of rain and of passersby. The air was thick with chill and just a hint of mist.

He heard a small sound, like someone clearing their throat, and the Doctor looked down to see a girl with large blue eyes roughly the same color of the sapphire oceans on Gemelda 7, which was to say very, very blue. Not as blue as the TARDIS, but blue all the same.

Well. This was slightly unexpected.

"Hello. Who are you?" he asked.

"Nel Grey, sir."

"Nel? What sort of name is that?" demanded the doctor.

"My sort. It's short for Elinor," she said matter-of-factly.

"It's a silly name."

"Oh? What's your name then?"

"The Doctor."

"Doctor who?"

"Yes, and by the way, I'm starving, are you going to eat that?" he asked, and she handed him the bagel she'd bought while spying on him.

Nel got the hint. It was easy for a lot of people to disregard her, and even easier to assume that this strange man was doing the same thing. Still, she had no reason not to trust him, especially since the air around him was different than around other people. It was... Old. He was old, older than he seemed.

Just very, very old. He just looked very, very young. Maybe mid twenties.

But he was funny. "I like your bow tie," she said.

"Bow ties are cool," he announced, adjusting the tie proudly, shaking a tuft of messy brown hair out of his eyes. Nel pointed to just behind her bangs, where the Doctor finally noticed a little blue bow about the same color as the TARDIS.

"Do you know what color that is?" he asked, leaning in until his face was inches from her hair.

"Erm, blue?" She murmured.

"Yes, but it's no ordinary kind of blue. That's the blue-iest blue there is, that is the nicest blue, the best blue - you're wearing a TARDIS blue hairbow."

"Oh," she said nicely. "Alright then," she added as she handed him a bagel.

"Problem is, with you having a TARDIS blue hairbow is that you don't know what a TARDIS is."

Well, she thought, it certainly doesn't sound like something you'd call a good friend.

The Doctor took a huge bite out of the bagel in his hand, then spat it back out, making a sound of utter revulsion. "I hate bagels," he said, "why did you let me eat a bagel?" he asked her accusingly as he flung the bagel across the park.

"Because I wanted to make you suffer, obviously. Come on, Doctor that's-that's a whole bagel wasted. Why would you do that?"

"Because bagels are gross."

"So, let me let this straight. My bow is TARDIS blue which is apparently impossible, bow ties and fezzes are cool, and you hate bagels and apples -"

"How did you know I don't like apples?" he asked suddenly.

Nel paused midstep. "Y'know, I have no idea. You must have mentioned it and forgotten."

"Nononononono, I don't forget the things I say and I definitely know I never said anything about apples."

Nel shrugged. "It's probably just one of those things, y'know? Please don't be upset. Look, I know that this sounds odd but I know weird things like that about people, just randomly. It's just a thing."

"That is definitely not 'just a thing', Nel-not-Elinor, that is a bona fide _something, _maybe even a deal, a big one."

"Why? It's the way things have always been," she pointed out.

"Yes but just because something is a certain way doesn't mean that it's supposed to be that way," he said, starting to get frustrated as the gears in his very old mind began to turn.

He reached over and held her face in his hands, bending down to be very close to her (she was a bit short). His thumbs on her cheekbones, he looked her straight in the eye, as if trying to see past the blue and straight inside to her mind.

Suddenly – everything. A flash, then images started to whoosh through her mind faster and faster and faster, of faces nothing like the Doctor's, but the same man, and of people she'd never seen, a universe traversed and seen through the eyes of a tired old man, and a change.

The Doctor struggled to pull his hands off of her face, his eyes screwed shut and his teeth gritted. "_Oooowww!_" he howled. "Blimey!"

Nel felt nothing, but now she saw memories that weren't her own. Of the blue police box, larger on the inside. Of a home planet that no longer existed. Of bloodshed and death and war and devastation. Of a soul so old and weary, but still so kind and calm.

Who was this man?


	3. Chapter 3

When the Doctor finally could pull his hands away from her face, he was very, very dizzy and even more confused, which meant he felt lucky to even know who he was or where he had parked the TARDIS.

The girl stood in front of him, looking very worried, as she well should have. "Erm, Doctor?" she asked. "Are. . . are you okay?"

"Yes, yes, I'll be fine in a moment. . . I just, I – what are you?" he asked, after pushing back his hair with both his hands.

"Um, sorry?" she replied.

"What. Are. You. It's a very simple question and I don't believe we have the sort of time for stupid answers. You aren't human, obviously, and . . . you don't know what you are," he realized slowly. The memories came rushing back, the thoughts, the dreams, the awkward thought pauses that happened occasionally to him as well.

"Odd, but your mind and the way you think and the way you process information. . . it's very much like the way a Time Lord does," he said. "But why would your mind work like a Time Lord's?"

Nel, for some odd reason, couldn't think this man was properly crazy. Strange, yes, but not crazy.

"Are you mad?" she asked tentatively. "Just to clarify, you're not insane, right?"

"What? No," he muttered as he shook his head, looking at her in a way that showed she had interrupted some very deep thought. "Not mad, just. . . confused, although I suppose I am mad, but not right now," he went on, hitting his hands on the sides of his head as he sat on a bench across the walkway.

"Sorry, but you're talking about things like, Time Lords and the way I think – what was that thing you did to me? Also, why would you lick an iguana?"

"Ha! See! You saw into my mind as well, so how can I be any more mad than you? And for your information, I was promised Jammie Dodgers and tea if I did it."

"Okay. . . so if I get you jammie dodgers and tea, will you calm down? You look a bit. . . upset. And really I'd sort of like to know how you appeared in a magic blue box and then read my mind, and why it makes a difference that my hairbow is TARDIS blue. Sound fair?"

The Doctor looked up at her and nodded, smiling. "Yes. Yes, sounds very fair, Nel Grey."

Later

"So, basically, what you're telling me is that you're an alien, right, and you're here in the blue police box called a TARDIS, time and relative dimentions in space, and basically you have no real idea why?" she asked, watching as the Doctor swirled his teacup, looking very interested in it's contents.

"Yep, that's basically it," he said. "What kind of tea is this?"

"I told you, but that's not the point. Why did you get all. . . y'know, alien-y when you touched my head? What would make you think I wasn't human?"

"Because you're not. You're obviously not, otherwise I never would have had such a strong reaction to you. You aren't human, I don't know what you are though. Which is odd because I know what everything is. But your mind, the way it's set up, the way you think. . . I would almost swear you were a time lord. . ."

"What's a Time Lord?"

"It's what I am."

"Oh! Okay. . . well. . . I'm not. I am human, I just. . . you see. . . I have. . . erm. . ."

"They told you that you have behavioral problems. . . you're shy. You're smart. You think so fast that sometimes your head hurts and you don't know why you do things, you just know that you do them and the thought is gone."

He stuffed a jammie dodger in his mouth, then pulled a silver thing out of his pocket and pointed it at her.

Nel was starting to get angry. She was human! She had always been, and that didn't change just because a man in a box had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. "Prove that I'm not human."

The Doctor pulled a little silver thing out of his pocket, and pointed the lit end at her. It made a strange buzzing noise as the Doctor waved it around her, then it made a clicky noise as he turned it to one side and seemed to read something on it. "As I suspected. Nonhuman. See?" he said, holding up briefly to her face, then pulling it back immediately.

Nel watched as he stuffed another biscuit in his mouth, then pushed his hair out of his face in an awkward two-handed motion.

"I'm pretty sure I'd know if I wasn't human."

"Not if you weren't supposed to know. . ." he said.

"What?"

He waved the silver thing around the room this time, then said, "your mum, what does she do?"

"She's a banker. . ."

"Your dad?"

"He's a neurosurgeon, he works on people's brains and such."

"So he's probably got a stethoscope?"

"There's an old one in the desk in the office. . ."

He spun 'round once and rushed off to find the office, with Nel in tow. "Don't you have a stethoscope?" she asked.

"I'm not that kind of Doctor. Well, I am. Well, I'm not, both," he babbled as he dug through the drawers until he found what he was looking for. He pointed the silver thing at it, then put the earpieces in his ears and held it against the left side of her chest.

He then moved it to the right side, and furrowed his pale eyebrows. "That's . . . odd, why isn't your other heart beating?"

"I think you should leave," she said suddenly.

This was getting a little too scary, even for Nel, and she suddenly decided that she didn't want her dad coming home and finding her with this strange man.

The Doctor paused, then set down the stethoscope with a nod. "Yes. . . of course. Sorry, I. . ."

"I'll come back to the park tomorrow," she promised, taking the Doctor's arm and leading him to the door. "Meet me at the same place?"

The Doctor nodded, but the way his eyes crinkled at the edges somehow told her he was very deep in thought. But he smiled and nodded anyway. "Don't be late."

That night, Nel tossed and turned in her bed. Her _Weird Sisters_ t-shirt twisted itself around her middle uncomfortably, and a strange whooshing and whirring sound filled her head every time she closed her eyes.

Why was the sound of the Doctor's blue box stuck in her head?

Why wouldn't it go away?

why did it matter?

Who was he? Was she really not human? What would she do if she wasn't? Would anything change? Would everything? Who was The Doctor in the Blue Box?

But it wasn't just the box. It was the Doctor himself. His weary old green eyes that didn't quite seem. . . right. Like they didn't match. It's not his face they didn't match. It's not his personality they didn't match. They just. . . didn't match.

She sat up and nodded. Tomorrow, she'd solve the mystery of Doctor Who.

The Next Morning . . . 

"So," said the Doctor, his arms crossed over his chest, standing in the doorway of the blue police box. "You want to see the universe?"

"What?" asked Nel, who had just walked up to him not even a second before, and hadn't even had a second to say "hello".

"Ran some tests last night, borrowed a few hairs, hope you don't mind," he began as he disappeared into the box. He left the door open, so Nel just followed him in – and stopped midstep.

"Oh. . . well."

"Yes, it is bigger on the inside. Now that we've got that out of the way," said the Doctor, while in his head, he went over what had done the night before, poring over every test he'd run, staring at the monitor for hours and hours, waiting for some sign that it wasn't real. But no matter how long he stared, the facts didn't change.

The reason the girl had two hearts.

It couldn't be.

Oh, but it was.

"You do in fact have two hearts, but one of them is dormant, it won't start beating until. . . well I have no idea when. Maybe if you're fatally wounded or if this one gets stopped or something. Or maybe it won't. I have no way of knowing."

A beep rang out and the Doctor said, "ah-ha!" and whirled around to leap up the stairs to a central console.

Nel turned around and tripped on the stairs, falling and landing on the side of her bottom. "What. . . what is this place?"

"TARDIS, Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. It's my spaceship," he added, looking from a screen to her with a wide smile. "It's also a time machine."

"No way!"

"Are you still on TARDIS or have you gotten to two hearts yet?"

"Still on TARDIS," she murmured as she climbed up the stairs.

It wasn't just big. It was beautiful. It was. . . gorgeous. Soft golden light shined all around her, around the edges of the room, but beaming down onto the console was clean white light. Buttons on the console glowed all sorts of colors, things spun 'round and beeped and whirred and whizzed.

It was magical.

"I don't have two hearts. I've had all sorts of scans and tests, I have one perfectly normal heart."

The Doctor sighed. He almost thought "humans," but then he remembered that she wasn't.

"What will it take to convince you?"

"Cutting me open and taking pictures of me on the operating table. Seeing it, feeling it, for myself. I may believe almost anything, after all I believe you and I believe in your box, but there is nothing remarkable about me _at all._"

The Doctor just grinned again. "Well. Then that's it."

"What?" she asked. "You're just. . . giving up?"

"Yes, of course," he smiled. "No point in going on about it if you don't want to believe that maybe, possibly, there is something about you that makes you just a _little_ bit more special. Because you hate being the sort of special they have already called you. Because it hurts to be different. Even though you can't help it."

Nel stared at him. How. . . how could he possibly have. . . ?

"I. . . I should go home."

"Then go."

Nel hurried down the stairs and ran out the door, pushing it open, but she couldn't get any more than a few steps outside before there was a nagging feeling in the back of her mind that made her stop. When she turned back to see, the Doctor was standing just inside the doorway.

Why couldn't she just leave it alone?


End file.
